How Many Sheep You Have

A shepherd was herding his flocks in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand new Jeep Cherokee advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and a YSL tie leaned out of the window and asked our shepherd: "If I can tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?"

The shepherd looks at the yuppie, then at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answers "sure!" The yuppie parks the car, whips out his notebook, connects it to a cell-phone, surfs to a NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system, scans the area, opens up a database and some 60 Excel spreadsheets with complex formulas. Finally he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech miniaturized printer, turns round to our shepherd and says: "you have here exactly 1586 sheep!"

"This is correct. As agreed, you can take one of the sheep" says the shepherd. He watches the young man make a selection and bundle it in his Cherokee.

Then he says: "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me my sheep back?"

"Okay, why not" answers the young man. "You are a consultant" says the shepherd.

"This is correct" says the yuppie, "How did you guess that?"

"Easy" answers the shepherd. "You turn up here although nobody called you.You want to be paid for the answer to a question I already knew the solution to. And you don't know anything about my business because you took my dog."